


Into That Night

by Morgan_Dhu



Series: Short prose [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Gen, Short Story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-14
Updated: 2019-08-14
Packaged: 2020-08-23 22:27:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 875
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20244730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morgan_Dhu/pseuds/Morgan_Dhu
Summary: Based on real events.  Trigger warning: homophobia, gay bashing.





	Into That Night

Into That Night

(c) Morgan MacLeod 1996 

It was Tuesday night in the small town's single tavern. He sat by himself at the scarred oak table farthest from the band, a draft in front of him, honouring an old ritual that he alone remained in this place to honour. He smiled wryly, watching the waiters over the rim of his glass. Not one familiar face among them tonight. The crowd of customers was new as well, mostly college kids. Some were back in town early for football camp, while others had come just to party away the last days of summer before immersion in the work of fall session. The first of autumn's passages had begun. Soon the town would swell to bursting with new, young faces. Next the leaves would turn, rich colours blooming across the hills and valleys surrounding the town. And then the leaves would fall and be shrouded by the winter snows. Another cycle of beginnings and endings. 

So many years this tavern had been a second home to him, a place for solace, amusement, escape. So many friends over the years, coming and going through the heavy wooden doors, so many nights spent stumbling and singing his way to one friend's couch or another, burrowing his skinny frame into borrowed blankets. So many warmly remembered mornings-after making scrambled eggs and coffee and pleasant conversation, thankful for the offer of a safe haven in the night. Now he was a stranger here, though the irony was that he had stayed, while the others had moved on. 

Years ago, when he was just starting college himself, he used to walk home late at night. From the tavern's front doors, he would walk straight up Bonaventure Avenue to the top of the hill, where the town sputtered to an end and the country-side began. The house he had been born in was only a mile or so beyond the ridge, and even in the chill of winter the walk down the hill was glorious. That was before they started trying to run him off the road in their cars, shouts of "run, faggot, run" shattering the peace of the night. Now he always crashed with friends, and walked home in the mornings. His parents didn't like him staying out, then or now, but they accepted it. He never had told them why he stayed. They worried enough about their bookish older son, with his thick eyeglasses and perpetual stoop and strange aversions to sports and marriage. 

But now his parents were almost all he had. Most of his classmates were all graduated and long gone to other towns and cities, and new friends were few these days. People moved in, spent their three of five years in the paper hunt, and then moved on. And each year the college kids were that much younger than he, and there was even less he could pretend to talk about with them. Even the professors now seemed younger than he was. The handful of old friends now rooted to the town themselves by tenure spent fewer nights out drinking, and more nights at home with the spouse and kids. And the oldest friends of all, those he'd respected and learned from in his youth, were retired now and greying into long silence. As he had started to grey himself. 

A familiar face caught his eye. He'd met the kid before, at Eleanor's house. He was some relation of hers - yes, he remembered now, the foster son of her second son Evan, the one who was teaching out West somewhere. Hal, that was the kid's name. 

Handsome kid. Martial artist, black belt, or maybe brown, Eleanor had said. That explained the hard body under the t-shirt and tight jeans. Barely twenty, and twice as much muscle as he'd ever had in his prime. Face sharply chiselled, a little grim, and firmly closed. He'd seen and known too much before Evan had taken him in. Eleanor had said that too. 

The kid came over, sat down, ordered a draft. They talked. Nothing in particular. The kid seemed lonely too. Last call came and went. They left together, crossing the railroad tracks that no train ran on any more, walking out along the bluffs. 

Early the next morning, some college jocks waiting for the football coach found his body out beyond the practise field. He lay by the railroad tracks, halfway between the tavern and Eleanor's house, just where you could sit and look out across the bluffs towards the bay. They needed the dental records to identify him, his face and body both so battered and bludgeoned by a hail of crushing blows. 

The kid stood trial, tall and muscled and hard in the prisoner's dock as he told his story of the night on the bluffs. Talked of fear and trembling when the frail, mild-mannered man he'd left the bar with had somehow overpowered him, tried to rape him. Talked of striking out blindly, only to free himself, and running, not knowing if the vicious predator he fled was following hot on his trail. Talked of how he had no regrets, because the queer had it coming to him. 

The sentence was three years, less time served.


End file.
